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Great Freedom #7
(Große Freiheit Nr. 7)

Directed by Helmut Käutner.
With Hans Albers, Ilse Werner, Hans Söhnker.
Germany, 1944, digital video, color, 111 min.
German with English subtitles.

Set in a dive bar in Hamburg, Käutner’s first color film focuses on the unhappy life of the “singing seaman,” an entertainer who performs for an audience of prostitutes and sailors on leave. He is obliged by his dying brother to care for his former mistress and falls madly in love with the young woman. But she has no romantic interest in the singer, preferring the company of a young dockworker. The film’s title— which is the name of the street where the bar is located—caused a furor among the Nazis (despite strong support from Joseph Goebbels) who feared that audiences would misinterpret the film’s meaning. As a result, the film was banned in Germany until the fall of the Third Reich.

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